By John Crewdson, Tribune senior correspondent. Reporting and research assistance was provided by Drew Crosby in Madrid

MADRID -- The most sweeping criminal indictment to arise thus far from the Sept. 11 attacks reflects a quiet but dramatic change in understanding by investigators here and across Europe of the terrorist organization known as Al Qaeda, and the international Islamic radical-terrorist network of which, they now agree, it is merely a part.

As laid out in the indictment, the defendants' alleged activities--from arranging travel and providing introductions to procuring false documents and, especially, moving money--provide the first detailed look at one of Al Qaeda's most potent weapons: the ability to call on networks of sympathizers whose collective numbers are far greater than Al Qaeda's few hundred card-carrying members.

Not one of the dozen key defendants named here last month as members or supporters of an alleged Madrid-based cell accused of working for Al Qaeda and helping advance the Sept. 11 plot is a native of Spain, or even nearby Muslim North Africa.

Instead, all migrated to Spain from Syria, where--according to the Spanish indictment--most became affiliated with an ultramilitant Islamic group called the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

Virtually from the moment of the Sept. 11 attacks, investigators in Europe and the U.S. were perplexed by what appeared to be a Syrian connection to the hijackings, both here and in Hamburg, Germany, whose university campuses produced three of the four Sept. 11 pilots and several accused or convicted accomplices.

At first, some questioned whether the Syrian government had perhaps known of the plot, or even whether Syrian intelligence had somehow been involved. Neither now appears to be true, investigators say, citing Syria's limited but useful cooperation with Western intelligence agencies attempting to unravel the connection between Sept. 11, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

One senior German intelligence official described the Muslim Brotherhood as "one part of the intelligence network of the mujahedeen." The Brothers, the official said, are not an extension of Al Qaeda but affiliated with it in the same way as Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiyah, which reportedly financed last year's Bali nightclub bombings with $30,000 provided by Al Qaeda, or a Salafist group in Morocco that allegedly used $50,000 in Al Qaeda money to pay for five suicide bombings in Casablanca earlier this year.

When Al Qaeda first appeared on the terrorist scene in the early 1990s, the Muslim Brotherhood was already well-established. It was 70 years ago last year that the Syrian Brotherhood, an offshoot of the even older Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, first dedicated itself to the overthrow of Syria's secular government.

In 1982, the Syrian army struck in an attempt to wipe out the organization, killing 5,000 to 10,000 Muslim Brothers in the Syrian city of Hama.

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

On to new lives

The Brothers who survived fled to neighboring Jordan and Saudi Arabia. From there, many went on to new lives in Germany, Italy, Belgium and especially Spain, where they obtained asylum or citizenship, married local women willing to convert to Islam, started families and went into business.

Some of the displaced Syrians did quite well. But rich or poor, many apparently retained their radical orientation into middle age. No longer young enough to fight in the jihad, but experienced in the mechanics of clandestine organizations, the Syrian Brothers were available to help Al Qaeda with financing, the movement of arms and the recruiting of young Muslim fighters.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, the man now at the center of the Spanish case might have seemed a classic immigrant success story: Muhammed Galeb Kalaje Zouaydi, after fleeing his homeland under hazy circumstances, made one fortune selling kitchen appliances in Saudi Arabia and another developing low-income apartment blocks in Madrid.

But to Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish magistrate who issued the 690-page indictment last month, Kalaje was much more than a flourishing entrepreneur. Garzon accuses Kalaje of having distributed some $800,000 on behalf of Al Qaeda by using his Spanish development company as cover, while keeping a second set of books to camouflage the transactions as legitimate expenses.

Emphatic denial

Kalaje's lawyer, Maria Angeles Ruiz Martinez, said her client had emphatically denied the charges at a postindictment hearing that was closed to the media. So had each of the other 13 defendants present, she said. The remainder of the 35 men named in the indictment are fugitives or citizens of other countries whose extradition Garzon has requested.

Ruiz Martinez acknowledged in a recent interview that her client had joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man--not out of ideological conviction, she said, but only to help him obtain asylum in Jordan. The same, she said, was true for many of the other Syrian defendants.

Since arriving in Spain in 1998, according to Ruiz Martinez, Kalaje donated tens of thousands of dollars--not hundreds of thousands, as Garzon alleges--to Islamic charities and individuals connected to Muslim fundamentalist organizations.

The money had come from Kalaje's own pocket as a zakat, an Islamic tithe he made as gratitude for his worldly success, and had never been intended to support terrorism, the lawyer said. Asked about the discrepancy between her client's admitted transactions and the $800,000 cited by Garzon, Ruiz Martinez said the police had misinterpreted Kalaje's ledger entries and in turn had misled the judge.

A second Syrian under indictment is Kalaje's business partner in Spain, Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, who during a 1997 visit to the U.S. videotaped a succession of American landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Sears Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge and the World Trade Center, the main target of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Ghasoub claimed after his arrest last year that he had made the videotapes, which reportedly include views of the World Trade Center's twin towers from many angles, at the request of a Spanish architect who later testified that he didn't know what Ghasoub was talking about.

The U.S. Justice Department has alleged in court documents that Kalaje funneled more than $200,000 to a single organization, the European office of the Bridgeview, Ill.-based Global Relief Foundation. The foundation's lawyers have denied accusations by the Bush administration that it diverted some of the contributions it received to terrorist organizations.

Ruiz Martinez confirmed that donations were made to Global Relief but said they had totaled only $36,000 and that the money Kalaje used had not come from Al Qaeda. She said she could shed no light on a report in two Spanish newspapers last year that some of the money Kalaje gave Global Relief was used to buy arms from the Kosovo Liberation Army that were shipped to Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

Sharing the center spotlight with Kalaje is Syrian native Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, allegedly Al Qaeda's chief contact among the Muslim Brothers in Spain, who in the mid-1990s reconstituted themselves at a local fundamentalist mosque as The Soldiers of Allah.

Barakat arrived in Spain in 1986 from Jordan, where he had initially fled after the Hama massacre. He married a Spanish woman and set himself up in Madrid as a small-time importer and wholesaler.

"I work in everything," Barakat told Garzon after his arrest in November 2001, "clothes, cars, honey, rugs . . . whatever comes around." Spanish prosecutors say Barakat's business, like Kalaje's, later became part of the support network for Al Qaeda.

Barakat's lawyer, Jalubo Teijelo, said his client had denied at the closed hearing any affinity for Al Qaeda or terrorism, telling Garzon that while he supported Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya, the Sept. 11 attacks had been "a barbaric act" not sanctioned by Islam or the Koran.

Teijelo acknowledged, however, that Barakat had given some $35,000 to Taysir Alouni, a prominent correspondent for the Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera who is accused in the indictment of carrying the money to Afghanistan while serving as a courier for Al Qaeda.

Teijelo maintains that the payments to the Syrian-born Alouni had come from Barakat's own funds and had been intended for widows in Syria.

Alouni, whose several visits to Afghanistan during 2000 were recorded by Spanish police, reportedly has acknowledged to Garzon that he did carry thousands of dollars from Barakat to Afghanistan, and also to Turkey and Chechnya, but denies the money was intended to support Al Qaeda or terrorism.

Al Jazeera and a Syrian journalists group in Spain have protested that the charges against Alouni, who covered the post-Sept. 11 fighting in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, represent an effort to intimidate Al Jazeera and to punish it for its reporting, which some see as having an anti-Western bias.

Garzon's indictment says, however, that the charges "are supported by events that have nothing to do with [Alouni's] current profession as a journalist" and are based on events that occurred while Alouni worked as a translator for the Spanish news agency EFE before joining Al Jazeera.

The bulk of the information in the indictment was compiled before Sept. 11, 2001, by investigators from the Spanish national police the DGP, who began watching and wiretapping Barakat some six years ago. As the investigation progressed, they began picking up intelligence on Kalaje, Alouni and their associates.

Although at least two individuals close to the Sept. 11 hijackers in Hamburg subsequently fell into the DGP's net, the agency, like its counterparts the BKA in Germany and the FBI in the U.S., was unable to fully assemble the puzzle until after Sept. 11.

A piece of the puzzle

One of the larger puzzle pieces is Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian-born businessman and alleged Muslim Brother who for the past 20 years has lived in Hamburg and who appears more often in the indictment than anyone except Barakat or Kalaje.

"According to comments made within Islamic circles," a DGP report states of Darkazanli, "he's been acting Sheik [leader] for more than 16 years, and they say he's one of the best."

A two-year investigation of Darkazanli in Germany has found extensive financial dealings with known and suspected Al Qaeda operatives. Darkazanli has admitted that he knew the lead Sept. 11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, during Atta's university days in Hamburg.

The Spanish indictment adds a new dimension to Darkazanli's activities across Europe, showing 30 calls to Alouni's home or office from Darkazanli's Hamburg telephone number between August 1998 and August 2000.

On at least four occasions during the same period, Darkazanli traveled to Spain to visit Kalaje, whom he had met previously in Saudi Arabia, and Barakat, with whose family he had lived in Jordan. On one of those trips, Alouni accompanied Darkazanli to Madrid from the Spanish city of Granada.

Police and prosecutors here and in Germany do not know the purpose of Darkazanli's trips to Spain. But Garzon describes Darkazanli, whose extradition from Germany he has formally requested, as Osama bin Laden's "financier in Europe," and a crucial link between Spain and Sept. 11.

Money trail

Garzon alleges that Kalaje channeled some $20,000 to Darkazanli, either directly or through a close associate, a Hamburg taxi driver named Abdul Fattah Zammar--another Syrian native who is Alouni's brother-in-law and a cousin of Mohammed Haydar Zammar, the Hamburg auto mechanic who reportedly has admitted helping recruit the Sept. 11 hijackers on behalf of Al Qaeda.

In a deposition taken last year by Ruiz Martinez, Darkazanli maintained that he and Abdul Fattah Zammar received only $9,000 from Kalaje, intended for the purchase of a used car in Hamburg that would then be shipped to Kalaje in Spain.

"For several days," Kalaje recalled during an interrogation by Garzon, Darkazanli "looked to see if he could find an appropriate car for us." But such a car hadn't been found, Kalaje said, and Darkazanli had returned the $9,000.

Records of Abdul Fattah Zammar's Hamburg account show, however, that while the money was received on May 25, 1999, the same amount was wired back to Kalaje on July 22--almost two months after it was sent, not "several days," raising questions about how the money had been used.

German investigators have expressed skepticism that a millionaire like Kalaje would have needed to hire anyone to find him a $9,000 used car.

As an investigative magistrate, Garzon performs a function that is unknown to American jurisprudence but is probably closest to that of a grand jury. For the past two years, he has ordered the arrest of suspects and questioned witnesses in the case, a process that culminated on Sept. 17 with the indictment.

It will now be up to prosecutors to try that case before another court, a process that some of the lawyers involved predict will not begin for a year and could take another year to reach a conclusion.

Although belonging to or supporting a foreign terrorist organization is illegal in Spain, Garzon's indictment turns on the argument that Sept. 11 was partly rooted in Spanish soil. One fact in support of that argument is a visit to Spain, two months before Sept. 11, by Atta, who is believed to have piloted the first plane to strike the World Trade Center.

A post-Sept. 11 investigation found hotel employees on Spain's Tarragona coast who recalled seeing Atta with Ramzi Binalshibh, a sometime Hamburg student and full-time Al Qaeda organizer who six days before the hijackings fled Hamburg for Spain and, later, Pakistan.

In an interview with Al Jazeera before his capture in Karachi, Pakistan, on the first anniversary of Sept. 11, Binalshibh boasted that he had been the Hamburg coordinator of the hijacking plot. The purpose of the Tarragona meeting, he said, had been to give Atta the final authority to choose the date and targets of the attacks.

Investigators here admit that they do not know who else attended the meeting, which occurred in 2001 between July 10 and 13. But they know from wiretaps on Barakat's telephone that Darkazanli was in Granada with Barakat and Alouni at the same time.

Garzon maintains that Barakat and the Spanish Al Qaeda cell contributed to the hijackings, in part, by helping arrange the meeting.

Asked whether Binalshibh, who has been extensively interrogated by American intelligence agents, had provided information linking Barakat or Darkazanli with the Tarragona conclave, a senior German intelligence official shook his head and replied, "Nothing."

`Beheaded the bird'

Another significant item, in Garzon's view, is a telephone conversation Barakat had two weeks before Sept. 11.

While police tape recorders turned, Barakat's caller reported from London that "they" had "entered the field of the aviation" and "have beheaded the bird."

According to the caller, "they" would start to "move" within a month. Interpreting "bird" as a reference to the American eagle, Garzon concluded that the caller was alerting Barakat to the impending Sept. 11 attack.

The identity of the caller, who identified himself during the conversation only as "Shakur," remains a mystery. During a lengthy interrogation by Garzon, Barakat refused to name the man.

Barakat knows the answer, but he is not talking.

"If in the current state of events I identify a friend," Barakat told the newspaper El Mundo last year, "he would be dragged by his arms into the same unfortunate destiny as mine. Surely they would accuse him just as unfairly as me."

I have been following this in the Spanish press. One thing that really strikes me is how remarkably wide-spread their funding/money laundering network had gotten over the years. Severing the links in that will do a lot to slow down their activities.

Arms dealers are not in the biz for charity, and nobody loves a bankrupt terrorist.

Anyone who doesn't believe that there is a "Terror, Inc." out there (formerly coordinated by the Soviets, but now operating independently) needs to ask themselves how the IRA "lashed up" with both Mid-East terrorists and South American narco-traficantes.

So are they saying that Al Queda is a subcontrator for the larger Muslim/Syrian Brotherhood? Been around for over 70 years, with it's latest manifestation as Al Queda, who has all those years of the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood behind them?

When Al Qaeda first appeared on the terrorist scene in the early 1990s, the Muslim Brotherhood was already well-established. It was 70 years ago last year that the Syrian Brotherhood, an offshoot of the even older Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, first dedicated itself to the overthrow of Syria's secular government.

This article is worth reading again given our current predicament of a Muslim Brotherhood loving president and a covert war in Syria.

According to the caller, "they" would start to "move" within a month. Interpreting "bird" as a reference to the American eagle, Garzon concluded that the caller was alerting Barakat to the impending Sept. 11 attack. The identity of the caller, who identified himself during the conversation only as "Shakur," remains a mystery. During a lengthy interrogation by Garzon, Barakat refused to name the man. Barakat knows the answer, but he is not talking.

hmmm...

JANUARY 2000 : (MALAYSIA TERROR SUMMIT _ ---see IRAQI NATIONAL AHMAD HIKMAT SHAKIR/SHAKUR) JANUARY 5, 2000 : (---see AULAQI) HERE IS WHAT WE KNOW TODAY about Ahmed Hikmat Shakir. In August 1999, Shakir, a 37-year-old Iraqi, accepted a position as a "facilitator" at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A "facilitator" works for an airline and assists VIP travelers with paperwork required for entry and other logistical issues. Shakir got the job because someone in the Iraqi embassy in Malaysia wanted him to have it. He started that fall. Although Shakir officially worked for Malaysian Airlines, his contact in the Iraqi embassy controlled his schedule. On January 5, 2000, Shakir apparently received an assignment from his embassy contact. He was to escort a recent arrival through immigration at the airport. Khalid al Mihdhar, a well-connected al Qaeda member who would later help hijack American Airlines Flight 77, had come to Malaysia for an important al Qaeda meeting that would last at least three days. (Shakir may have also assisted Nawaf al Hazmi, another hijacker, thought to have arrived on January 4, 2000.) -----------Stephen Hayes:See No Evil, Hear No Evil(What the 9/11 Commission narrative left out: Iraqis) The Weekly Standard ^ | September 5 / September 12, 2005 | Stephen F. Hayes Posted on 08/28/2005 1:49:07 PM PDT by RWR8189

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

OCTOBER 2001 : (IRAQI NATIONAL AHMAD HIKMAT SHAKIR/SHAKUR LEAVES QATAR FOR AMMAN JORDAN) Shakir [Ahmad Hikmat Shakir] left his home in Qatar in October 2001, for Amman, where he was detained by Jordanian authorities for several months. But the Jordanians released him ..... - "U.S.: Top al-Qaeda operative recently in Baghdad," AP, October 2, 2002

2001 : (IRAQI NATIONAL AHMAD HIKMAT SHAKIR/SHAKUR) When Shakir was arrested shortly after the 9/11 attacks, his "pocket litter," in the parlance of the investigators, included contact information for Musab Yasin and another 1993 plotter, a Kuwaiti native named Ibrahim Suleiman. . These facts alone, linking the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, would seem to cry out for additional scrutiny, no? ------------Stephen Hayes:See No Evil, Hear No Evil(What the 9/11 Commission narrative left out: Iraqis) The Weekly Standard ^ | September 5 / September 12, 2005 | Stephen F. Hayes Posted on 08/28/2005 1:49:07 PM PDT by RWR8189

Al Jazeera is also based in Qatar, and a number of their reporters have been caught aiding al Qaeda.

Qatar, while a useful US ally, is also pro-Muslim Brotherhood, and is meddling in Mali where al Qaeda is battling for control against France.

The Iraqi, Hikmat Shakir, in his pocket litter had conact info for a number of known al Qaeda terrorists and also had an old number for Taba Investments - the very same number used by al Qaeda's most senior Iraqi member Mahmdouh Mahmoud Salim. Taba Investments was an al Qaeda front group in Africa which was known for buying uranium among other things while bin Laden was in Sudan, under the patronage of Tourabi's NIF, which wa salso backed by Iran. A guy named Bayazid worked at Taba; Bayazid listed his home address as the same location as the charity Benevolence International, based in Obama's home turf of Illinois.

Despite all of this, Qatar released Ahmad Hikmat Shakir and he fled to Iraq.

The story identifies MHA as Mudhar Hussein Almalaki, and notes Almalakis involvement in the infamous Hit List that was developed on the al-Shmukh forum and copied over to the Ansar al-Mujahideen Arabic forum. For background on that see:

SNIPPET: MADRID  Spanish police on Tuesday arrested a suspected member of Al Qaeda who was key to the terror groups Internet propaganda and recruiting operations, officials said.

The suspect arrested in the eastern city of Valencia administered one of the worlds most important jihadist forums, dedicated to recruiting and indoctrinating Islamic terrorists, Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said.

The name of that forum and the suspects name were not given, only his initials, M.H.A. He is Jordanian-born with Saudi citizenship.

SNIPPET: The suspect worked at home 8 to 15 hours a day for al-Qaida and for two offshoots, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the minister said.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.